


If Only for Tonight

by spacemutineer



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e02 Bad Code, Episode: s02e03 Masquerade, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Intimacy, M/M, Need, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s02e02 Bad Code, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-19 08:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22174510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemutineer/pseuds/spacemutineer
Summary: Set in season 2, after episodes 2 & 3 - Bad Code & MasqueradeHarold and John try to pick up the pieces immediately after Harold's rescue from Root and slowly they begin to heal from their wounds together.
Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese
Comments: 100
Kudos: 165





	1. The Passenger

The brain could do such odd things under the effects of prolonged strain and exhaustion, not to mention strong unknown narcotics.

Whose car was this? Was it a rental? Probably not, he reasoned with what logic he had left. It was far more plausible to simply be stolen.

These were all stupid, pointless things to think about then, of course, but there were the thoughts just the same. 

Did he fasten his seatbelt? It was fastened somehow, strapped taut across his body. It seemed unlikely he'd done it himself but he had as much recollection of the event as he had of getting to the car in the first place. The events of the previous five minutes were blurred to missing in his memory.

The only thing he could remember with any clarity was John. 

From the driver's seat, Reese looked him over as he sped them away as fast as he could manage from the train station. As fast as he could manage from this nightmare.

"Finch, I'm going to ask you some questions and I need you to be honest with me. I can tell you've been sedated, but are you injured in any way?"

In his mind he could see nothing but injury. Alicia Corwin collapsing forward with a bullet lodged in her brain, dead before her face hit the dashboard. A woman seizing on the floor of a restaurant, doubled in on herself, foam bubbling up between her lips. Denton Weeks dangling by his chafing wrists, his covered head hung low, each of his breaths for hours on end a rasped death rattle. Root herself lying limp on the floor, her body jolting from the force of Weeks' merciless kicks to her ribs, again and again and again.

And all of it had been for Harold, him alone, a grand lesson in human cruelty written in others' agony. 

"No." 

"What about the bandage?" 

He looked down at his hand. It was professional wrapping, sturdy and lasting. The pharmacist had done quality work. But by now, the dressing surely needed changing. Harold wondered what it looked like beneath the gauze. He could only imagine it as he last saw it, a long thin line welling red into the hollow of his hand, a pool of his pain he could hold. 

"I was a distraction." 

Reese pursed his lips at that. Clearly it was not the answer he wanted. For now at least, he let the matter drop. 

"Do you know what drugs you were given, or the dose? Anything you can remember will help." 

That he could remember. All of it, every second. Not that it would do them any good. 

"It was an injection into my neck. I never saw it." 

"Any idea how long ago?" 

"An hour? I don't know, not much more than that, I think."

"All right. That's fine, Harold. Time is bound to be fuzzy for a bit." 

Time wasn't the only thing that was fuzzy. He turned to view his driver, his rescuer, hazy beside him like a half-forgotten dream. Why on earth was John here?

"How did you find me, Mr. Reese?" 

"Eventually? Finances. And a trip to Texas. It took some doing, but I had help." 

Harold thought of these people who must have worked with John to help him with nothing to gain for themselves and everything to lose. Detective Fusco probably, almost certainly Detective Carter. He had been alone and isolated for so long that he was not sure how to assess the fact that he was not anymore. Not completely. These people cared about him enough to help, for whatever unknowable reason.

Or at least John made them care. Reese looked impeccable as ever, but Harold could see his nerves in his clenched grip of the steering wheel and his repeated quick side glances down to his passenger. It did not look like he fully believed Harold was back with him. 

The man was within his rights to feel that way. This was not supposed to be. Harold had done everything possible to ensure that it wasn't. 

And yet.

And yet somehow he'd found a way. John Reese willed it so, and thus it was. 

Harold felt dizzy, most likely incipient motion sickness but there were a number of viable candidates for the symptom's culprit at that point. The drugs and the extended exertion had taken their toll on his system. He tried to fight off a shiver and failed.

"Could you please turn on the heater? I'm cold." 

Reese looked down at him again and frowned. He turned the thermostat up a notch. 

"You're cold because you're in a mild form of shock, Harold. Your body is pooling your blood in your core to protect your organs, not leaving enough to warm your extremities. If you're able, I want you to lean your seat back as far as it will go for now. Can you do that? We'll be somewhere you can rest more comfortably soon." 

Harold did as he was told. He certainly had no will to do anything else. Moving much at all seemed an insurmountable challenge. Every muscle, every joint in his body ached. The world outside as it sped by was a blur of the off-white of suburban houses and the green of leafy trees as landscaping. Focusing on any single object was impossible.

"Where are we going?" 

"Off the beaten path for a few hours at least. Probably the night. I don't want to keep you in the car like this any longer than I have to. We're going to get you some place to lie down, get some fluids and food into you, see how you do. Then we can work on getting home."

Home. He had a home. He'd let it all go, but it was still there somehow. 

Home was waiting there for him in the city. 

Home was sitting here just beside him.


	2. Arrival

Deposited onto the faded hotel room couch, Harold felt artificially slowed as if he were underclocked by half. The world seemed to be moving faster than his mind could process it. 

Reese fluttered around him, somehow everywhere at once. He watched as John scrutinized the security of the room, analyzing all potential ports of ingress and defensible positions inside. 

He was fastening the locks at the door. He was pulling the curtains closed at the window. He was standing on a chair at the ceiling vent.

He was suddenly crouching right up close. Harold jumped in his seat. 

In this appraisal too, John worked with all efficiency. He checked Harold's pulse at his throat, tested his pupil dilation with the flashlight of his phone, and apologized when Harold winced against the glare. Carefully, he tugged Harold's tie loose and opened his collar both to inspect the injection site on his neck and to try to help him breathe a little easier. That last bit was a lost cause, of course, but a kind consideration nonetheless. 

His physical examination complete, John pressed a small glass half filled with tap water into Harold's hands and watched him closely for the first few shallow sips. 

All the while he was talking. 

"I have to get us a few things we need," was one of the various things Harold remembered him saying, but by the time he understood what that meant, Reese was already out of the room. 

It occurred to him that the man in the suit must have been the man in the shirt sleeves now because John had left his jacket behind, wrapped around Harold's shoulders. He only partially remembered that happening.

He thought about it all, the mystique this simple piece of tailoring gave John, the free passage it allowed him in so many contexts, how perfectly it fit him and how loose it felt around Harold's smaller frame. Its weight and its warmth gave him something to focus on other than where he had been before this room, what he was made to witness. He took another drink and tried to contemplate details of cut and stitching and not the sight of a man progressively dying of stress and thirst five feet ahead of him, uselessly begging his torturer for water. 

John came back into the room quietly in the hope Harold had perhaps lain back and fallen asleep. He did not seem much surprised to be disappointed. The metallic sound of the deadbolt clicking into place with Reese on this side of it was welcome.

"Hey, Finch. I got a good haul, I think." 

Indeed, a remarkable bounty emerged from the shopping bag that he emptied onto the room's small round table. There was a pile of unfolded men's clothes, some travel toiletries, and seemingly one of every offering from the vending machine. Harold had to blink a few times to absorb it all, but at least he was able to adequately process human language again by that point. 

"How long were you gone, Mr. Reese?"

"Eight minutes. I told you it would be less than ten."

"Those clothes?"

"They're 212's down the hall. Overpacker about your height, currently at the bar for drinks before he heads to the airport. He'll blame his missing clean laundry on his happy hour hangover if he notices at all. Either way, he'll be far from here. I know it's more business casual than you'd prefer but I wasn't likely to find handsewn Italian craftsmanship crammed into a middle manager's suitcase." 

He picked through, touching every piece of clothing to show. "I have a polo here, pants and socks, two pairs of boxers. Didn't see a t-shirt or I would have snagged that too, sorry."

There was nothing to apologize for. They were something _else_ , and they were perfect.

"Oh, good, you finished the water. I'll get you some more. Do you want to try to eat something? This jerky looks pretty good. Korean barbeque."

"Did you stand there and buy all of that?"

"No, I paid the sulking teenager playing Pokémon by the ice machine fifty bucks to do it while I went to chat up Kayla at the front desk with the travelers' supplies and first aid. She had everything. I even got us a two-for-one breakfast coupon for the Waffle House across the parking lot." 

That he held up too, a sliver of paper with curly blue handwriting visible on the back. 

"Oh, and Kayla's phone number."

John half smiled at him but it only made the world seem more off kilter. This was absurd, impossible. Nothing of this casual conversation, this quiet place, the two of them being together at all made sense against the stark memories of the previous days. He doubted even if he wasn't still disoriented and half-sick from the drugs that it would be any more coherent. The room was spinning again at the corners.

"Finch? Harold, are you still with me?"

Always, forever. If he found him after all this, how could it be anything less?

"Mmm, yes, sorry. I'm still a bit... out of sorts."

"That's not a problem. Listen, why don't we get you cleaned up and into some fresh clothes, something you can sleep in? Let's start there."

He'd heard Reese do this with their numbers. The deliberate calmness, the cautious attention, the triage practicality. It was how John handled the wounded. It was how he cared for the traumatized.

That was how John saw him. Wounded. Traumatized.

Harold stood and wobbled and wished he did not. With a secure grip on his arm, John set their measured pace across the room. 

It took Harold months to learn how to walk for the second time. It required focus, determination, and a great deal of acceptance. He accepted that he would never run again. He accepted the ever-present pain. He accepted the lopsided limp that was all his legs had to offer him anymore. But he refused to accept using a crutch for even a step further than he had to. 

And yet that was exactly what he was doing now. It would not have been a particularly elegant or rapid voyage, but this was nothing. Harold could have managed all of this alone. It was ridiculous to even suggest he couldn't. It wasn't he who had been half-crucified. It wasn't he who had been intentionally poisoned to within an inch of his life. 

He was only the one who watched. 

It was nothing. This was nothing. He had no need for a crutch. 

John's hand did not leave him until Harold was standing on the cold pale tile in front of the bathroom sink. When Reese finally retreated he left the door open behind him. 

Just a crack. 

Just in case.

And Harold let him.


	3. Sunset

Harold had not seen himself in a mirror in days until he stood awkwardly in a hotel bathroom and splashed water on a face he barely recognized as his own. The last time he had gone this long without shaving or bathing he was recovering from six screws being implanted into his spine. 

At least he was properly medicated then. Harold tore open three packets of ibuprofen, all John could offer him safely not knowing what else he'd been given. _May this at least take the edge off_ , he thought as he swallowed them with a cupped handful of water from the sink. _Any kind of edge._ His vertebrae felt like knives welded together. Beneath him, his leg trembled, struggling with his weight. What he needed to do would have to be quick.

He brushed his teeth and shed his clothes as if he were peeling away a layer of skin. 212's boxers were only a little too big when he stepped into them. Tessellated snowmen danced across the fabric. A holiday gift, no doubt, now lost to its recipient forever. 

His bandage had been on too long, although that was true a full day ago now. He hissed as he separated the gauze from the torn skin of his hand. The cloth came away dark with coagulated blood. His palm seeped a fine line of bright red fresh.

Before he stepped out, he took one last glance in the mirror. The weary, frail man on the other side looked back, equally dismayed. It occurred to him that Reese would be the first person not a medical professional to ever see his scars. This was certainly not how he would have wanted that to happen. Left to his own devices, he would never have allowed it to happen at all. He preferred not to see them either. Buried under three pieces of bespoke suit they felt sufficiently separated from him. Now they would be on full display, his only representation.

Harold opened the door. It's not like there was any other choice.

Outside, John was waiting leaned against the wall and he stood up straight as soon as Harold came out. The sedatives were wearing off. It was not just his leg shaking now. John was at his elbow in an instant. His other hand hovered over Harold's back, ready to support it if required, but cautious not to touch his bare skin unnecessarily and make Harold more uncomfortable, as if such a thing were possible. 

Reese's gaze scanned over his body rapidly and intently in the same way his hands had in those first few seconds of their reunion when Harold was lying mostly immobile on the marble of a train station floor and both of them were quite reasonably concerned he had been shot. 

That memory felt like years ago. According to the nightstand alarm clock, it had been less than three hours.

He would have felt embarrassed as Reese guided him and examined him were he not too mentally drained to process the emotion. There would be all eternity afterward for it, he supposed. 

But John was not looking at his scars. Instead he focused only on seeking out current injuries unmentioned, wasting not a second on old healed ones.

The man had everything ready. The bed covers were open. Fresh bandages waited nearby. A glass of cool water was sweating a puddle onto the nightstand. 

"Can I take a look at your hand? Harold, you're bleeding."

Oh, yes. Of course he was. He sat on the bed, unsteady and lightheaded. John sat beside him and took his hand to gently pull open his fingers. The makeshift doctor tilted his head as he assessed Harold's palm.

"This is a thin cut. Glass?"

"Razor blade."

John sucked in a breath but never looked up from his task. He was as efficient and careful as ever in his effort to clean and rewrap the wound. Harold did not watch him work. He only watched John's eyes fixed upon his current mission. The circles beneath them were heavy and dark. He'd not seen him look so pale since he was still actively in the process of drinking himself to death. And Harold knew why. 

"Human bodies do not function properly with as little rest as we have had, Mr. Reese. You haven't allowed yourself more than a few hours of sleep in days and I have had none at all. I know how impaired I feel at this level of exhaustion." 

"The difference is I've had years of training so I can work effectively for long stretches with little to no sleep. It's all right, Finch. We'll be back in the city tomorrow."

At least he didn't bother pretending obvious facts were untrue while he actively rejected Harold's point.

"Which is it, little or no? However extensive, training must still contend with biology." 

Science was not swaying him. This might. 

"Just tell me, John. Are we safe here tonight?"

He tucked the end of the gauze under and sealed it with tape before he looked up. 

"We'll be safest if I'm standing ready in case something comes up."

"Not what I asked. Let me rephrase. Do you believe _I_ am safe here tonight? I deserve to know."

Reese paused, aware now he was being cornered. He released Harold's hand. 

"I won't ever tell you that you're safe unless I believe it." 

"So, yes. You wouldn't have brought me here otherwise. If I am safe here then so are you, Mr. Reese. I'll order you if I have to."

"And I'll ignore it. I'm not on the clock, Harold."

No, he wasn't. Reese was with him now because he wanted to be. He wasn't working so hard, so tirelessly to assist his employer. He was doing it all to protect his friend. 

It was beautiful, deeply affecting. 

And it made everything that much harder. Harold removed his glasses to rub at his aching eyes. 

"Please don't make me continue arguing with you. I am tired, you are tired, and we are fortunate enough to be somewhere safe for the time being. I need you to do this, John. Let me rest without worrying about you, if only for tonight."

Reese's shoulders fell along with his defensiveness. At last, it was enough. He sighed as he leaned down to untie his shoes. Harold knew he probably had no hope John would actually sleep that night, but if he could at least get him to lie down a while for his hypervigilance, it would be a start.


	4. Night Watch

Absolute mental and physical exhaustion made for counterintuitively fitful sleep. Still, it was well into the small hours of the night before the first time Harold woke enough to consider himself functionally conscious again. The sedative haze clung to him. Waking confused in an unfamiliar environment spiked his adrenaline and he tried to tamp down the physiological response with an intellectually logical assessment.

This room around him was lit only by the faint glow of parking lot lights outside filtering through old curtains. The bed he lay in was soft, pillow-topped probably but worn enough to be sagging in the middle from years of use. Yes, he remembered this place. This was a hotel room, a safe place to rest, a temporary waystation. This was _off the beaten path_.

And if that was true, then somewhere in the silence to his left was another over-soft bed. And in that bed, at least the last he knew, lay John Reese.

John, who had moved heaven and earth to find him. John, who should be asleep if he followed Harold's instructions at all. 

He hoped he'd fallen asleep. More selfishly he hoped he was still awake. His whisper into the dark was almost inaudible. 

"Mr. Reese?" 

Almost was not completely.

"Hmm? Finch? You all right?" 

Somehow he hadn't expected a response. John invariably exceeded his expectations and yet. 

"Sorry, I, uh, I didn't know if you were still here in the room."

"I'm not going to be anywhere else without you knowing about it. Is something wrong?"

Harold hesitated. He was already in too deep to stop what he never should have started. Deep was the right word for it. It felt akin to drowning and he was sinking further still. 

"Not wrong exactly. Can I... I was wondering if I might, or you... I wanted to know you're there in the dark, is all. I wanted to be able to... to hear you. Ah, I'm sorry, this is not at all an appropriate request. Please forgive me, Mr. Reese. I'm not thinking clearly."

"Finch, stop. This is easily solved. I'm glad you told me what you need, even if you did immediately try to take it back."

Without turning the light on, Reese stepped across the divide and crept under the blankets beside him. Harold realized the bed on that side would still be warm from his body, but it was far too late by then to do anything about it. He'd been lying as close to John in the other bed as he could possibly manage and it wasn't close enough. There was no way out of him knowing that now, although John was too tactful a person to ever mention such a thing. Harold scooted to the far edge of the bed, stiff and still, side-eyeing John in the dim shadows as he settled in with his pillow.

"Just try to get some rest, Harold. I'll be here. So will you."

Harold's throat clicked involuntarily. He rolled over, facing away so Reese could no longer see him.

John knew he was being listened to, of course, so he deliberately slowed and lengthened his breathing, clearly hoping for intentional or subconscious mimicry. He was not going to get his wish. Harold shifted under the blankets beside him, uncomfortable in every sense. 

Minutes passed and Harold listened, at once relieved by the muted rhythmic waves of John's inhales and exhales and disturbed by his own irrational request that led to this situation. He felt laid bare like this, more naked than if he were missing all of his clothes instead of just his shirt. His defenses had eroded and the innate resolve he relied upon was fading. He held out as long as he could in his weakened state but at last it was unbearable.

Harold flipped over to face him, this inexplicable, impossible man. At the motion, John turned his head, concerned and as ever curious about him. In the space of hours Harold had gone from being resigned to the certain reality he'd never again have contact with Reese or any other part of his life to somehow lying in bed next to him, looking into the man's eyes, sparkling even now in the low light. Eyes that looked into him, looked over him, looked after him.

He shouldn't be here. Neither of them should be here, this was an impossibility. And yet there Harold was and there John was next to him, in all his beauty and unceasing dedication. Harold found himself reaching out to touch him, to know. 

It was irresistible. He was. Reese blinked at first as Harold's hand approached him but rather than pull away, he rolled toward him instead and his eyes fell shut. It was an act of consent, an act of trust. And with that faith freely given, Harold began a meticulous venture of human cartography, slowly mapping every delicate line and feature of his face.

This was the perfect arch of John's brow, the taut curve of his jaw, the scruff of his chin. This was the gentle give of his lips that parted just slightly at his touch. Harold's fingers glided across the ridge of his nose, slid along the angle of his elegant cheekbone, and brushed by the extraordinary softness of his long eyelashes. 

Harold knew his imagination was powerful, but it could never conjure such exquisite detail. This was John Reese here beside him, somehow, someway. 

Near the shallow crow's feet at the corner of John's eye, a tear slid sideways by Harold's exploring fingertips. Just the one, the slightest thing, everything. He rubbed the tiny drop between his fingers and let the liquid emotion absorb into his skin. Reese's cheek felt warm and whiskered from the day's neglect when he held it.

"But you were there, John. You were there for me in time."

John's eyes flew open, wide and crystalline blue.

" _Finch..._ "

He swallowed, wanting to say something more, but no words came. Instead, he crushed his eyes closed again and bowed his head forward into Harold's chest. His careful breathing shattered into halting flashes that flickered heat across Harold's bare skin. John's hair tickled against his throat. 

Blessed by the night with privacy and stillness, they lay closer than they had ever been to each other, closer than Harold had been to anyone in years. He did not intend to slip his hand around the nape of John's neck, but there he was doing it anyway, slowly petting his hairline trimmed short, luxuriating in each long smooth stride. 

This would have consequences, he knew, but it made no difference. Not then. It was the most peace Harold had felt in longer than he dared to remember. Whatever was to come of this, he would accept it. Such a moment, so unexpected, so rare, was far too valuable to let go. 

He closed his eyes and took the sense memories inside himself to keep. For this single moment in time, they were connected. Bound together they were whole. Harold would hold that truth close, a tiny flame of care and humanity to help light his way through the vast darkness that he knew was his future.

For those fragile seconds, those few shared heartbeats, the world beyond them vanished. There were only the two of them, two dead men grateful to their souls for the other's continuing afterlife. 

It was enough. They were enough.

Gradually, John's breathing evened out to stable waves that breezed across his skin. Harold waited, anticipating the inevitable moment when John would lift his head away and pretend none of this had ever happened. They would both pretend, although neither of them were likely to forget. Harold waited and tried not to mourn the tragedy of the loss before it came. 

Another dozen or so unhurried passes of Harold's touch down the length of his neck to the hint of his shoulders exposed past his undershirt, and John did indeed pull himself away. The break was as painful as expected, but it was a pain so different than what Harold was used to. He welcomed it, the clenching inside his chest just beneath where Reese had laid his head, a physical reminder that the extraordinary experience had been real. 

It was clear immediately that John was going to take this breach in their maintained distance hard. They had both just willfully crossed every boundary they'd long ago laid between themselves. Certainly some had blurred as their time working together passed. They were all but obliterated now. 

Reese slid back all the way to sit up, tall and straight. He looked down at Harold without meeting his gaze, inscrutable as he thought. The subtle nod to himself that followed was just perceptible in the shadows. Whatever it was, his decision was made. 

Harold tried to ready himself for what was to come next. In his mind, he saw a hundred different scenarios of regret and apology, embarrassment and sadness, anger and disgust. 

None of them remotely resembled John's actual choice. 

Reese simply reached back and tugged his t-shirt off over his head. In the night's quiet, the sound of cotton falling to the floor seemed impossibly loud. The low light caressed his body, every curve of honed muscle, every recently and not-so-recently healed scar. Wordlessly, he lay down again and turned himself away. 

For a long uncertain moment, everything was still and so fully silent that it occurred to Harold they were probably both holding their breath. Harold certainly was.

Or at least he was until John wriggled himself toward him under the sheets to come to lie just touching his broad back to Harold's chest. At the sudden sensation of more skin to skin contact than he'd had in years, Harold could not help a jagged gasp but John just settled himself into place and said nothing. 

He'd already said what he meant when he came to bed in the first place.

_You told me what you need._

Harold had told him twice now apparently, the second time when he didn't even realize he was doing it. But John understood anyway. The touch of Harold's hand told him far more than Harold could ever say himself in words. 

Without qualms or questions John had provided him with what Harold had almost let himself forget existed at all: the natural human comfort of another person lying warm and alive against him, and the true calm of absolute certainty that he was not alone. 

John understood because Harold told him. He only realized this was what he needed once it had already been given to him. John knew before he did and Harold could not have been more grateful for that fact.

This man was a gift, a gift undeserved. To still be offering of himself, his very body, after the lengths he had gone to bring Harold back from the brink... it was almost impossible to fathom. 

_You told me what you need._

But what did John need? Would he know himself? Even in good circumstances, Reese strove never to ask for his own needs past basic survival, and these were anything but good circumstances. 

Deprivation was all John knew, all he expected, and all he believed he deserved. The good man lying before Harold trying all he could to help him had no capacity to see his own value, even as he proved it day by day. Even as he was proving it at that very moment.

Harold sighed and he felt the expansion of his lungs gently shift John's weight against his own. Reese would never understand how much this meant to him, all that he did, all that he was doing. Harold certainly knew he possessed no ability to adequately express it to him. He never had and he never would.

Not in words. 

It was another line to cross, another wall between them to fall in the aftershocks of this earthquake. He took a breath to attempt and fail to settle his nerves and Harold slipped his arm around John's side to pull himself closer to him. 

Reese broke his long silence with a soft instinctive sound, almost a whimper, fragile and human. Like his tear, it was pure condensed emotion that even he with all of his ingrained control could not suppress. It vibrated through his body, infused with his gratitude, his sorrow, his compassion, his longing, and more than anything, his fear. John was careful when he covered Harold's bandaged hand with his unsteady own so as not to hurt him. 

The effort failed completely. It tore at his heart.

Both of them were wounded. Harold had scared John, frightened this otherwise fearless man more and deeper than he'd ever known possible. 

Perhaps he should have. It wasn't as if he'd forgotten his own freefall sensation of knowing John was injured, very possibly dying, and nowhere within his reach. They'd been through that vertiginous terror several times now, each experience unique in its agony. But it was the first that left the deepest scars. 

_No, you stay away. Don't even risk it._

God, he'd tried to protect him even then, bleeding out alone in the barren stairwell of a parking garage. The memory of John's voice fading over the line, each word weaker than the last - _Wanted to say thank you, Harold_ \- was etched forever in his mind, along with the pressure of his foot holding the gas pedal to the floor, the red lights flying overhead as he ran them, and the panic of trying to consider medical logistics for the man while simultaneously trying to convince him that he was worth the attempt at all. 

John would say this example showed why he had to find Harold when he was missing, but he would be wrong. John's self worth was intentionally and systematically burned out of him. It was not his fault he could not help but vastly underestimate his own importance. That fact did not make it any less true. 

Yes, with his tech abilities and problem solving Harold was useful in their work, of course. Very much so, in fact. But John was integral, required for even the most basic functionality. Their system would fail completely without his extraordinary skills and direct physical intervention. 

Without him, there would be only knowing. 

There would be only watching, waiting, mourning. 

Without him, there would be only the list. 

No, John could not be lost, certainly not to himself and his own desperate, misplaced sense of self-sacrifice. He would have to be made to understand that, whatever it meant and whatever it required. There could be no other way forward for them. 

But that would all be for later. 

For now, pressed close, Harold could feel John's tensed muscles gradually relaxing with each deepening breath he took beneath his arm. Harold was a part of that breath, a part of John's life itself, moving with it, being moved by it. His own palpitations were at last beginning to ease as they echoed against the solid strength of John's back. 

If only for the length of this night, he was anything but lost. 

Somehow, after everything, they were both of them found.


	5. In the Wake

"Finch? Hey, sorry."

A hand at his shoulder shook Harold out of a restoring blank oblivion and back into the abrasive waking world. He blinked open bleary eyes to see John standing above him, dressed and clean shaven. His hair was drying which meant he'd already showered. Bright sun came in through the cracks in the curtains in streaks. Harold groaned.

"What time is it?"

"Eleven thirty. Check out's at twelve. I let you sleep in as long as I could, but we really do need to get moving. I know you're still tired, but you can rest more in the car."

It was slow getting up, but at least he was recovered enough for a full shower at last. Days worth of sweat and grime washed down the drain with the suds of a tiny bar of hotel soap. He considered his first ever left-handed shave a success when he only nicked himself twice. Coming out of the bathroom he felt almost halfway himself again, although the sensation was somewhat diminished by being dressed in a random stranger's casual Friday.

By the desk, Reese sat filled with potential energy, tapping one foot against the other, a coiled spring on an office chair. He looked up at Harold expectantly. 

"How are you feeling?"

A simple question with no true answer that was articulable, much less simple. He felt so many things simultaneously, all tangled up together like a knot of Christmas lights, a jumbled mass of heat and light with no discernable beginning or end.

Or maybe they had exactly the same beginning and end. 

"Better, Mr. Reese. Thanks."

_Thanks_ , as if that could ever be enough to cover what John had done. _Thanks_ , as if he'd held a door open or shared his order of fries. Harold added imbecilic to the list of things he was feeling at that moment.

Anxious was at the top of the list. Anxious was his present and all of his immediately foreseeable future. Harold wanted desperately to be home again but he also never wanted to leave this room for as long as he lived. After such horror and despair, this cheap hotel room had been the sanctuary of a peace he never imagined he could again have in this lifetime. 

But outside these walls was reality. Reality was beginning to seep in through the cracks already. 

"I want to switch cars before we get on the road. Probably once or twice more on our way too. We're going to take a roundabout drive back to Manhattan. Interstate straight lines are not our best choices. The route I've got in mind is slower but it's safer."

Clearly while Harold spent the morning sleeping, Reese had been running detailed security plans. Had the man slept at all? Harold wanted to ask, but that would mean mentioning the night before and he had absolutely no intention of doing that unless and until John brought it up first. The connection they had shared was such a fragile blessing. Any breath spent discussing it stood a very real chance of shattering it entirely.

The odds of a discussion today seemed low to nonexistent. Reese was entirely focused on his objective at hand, bringing them back to their own territory and their own peculiar form of normalcy. It sounded lovely in theory and next to impossible in practice. They were not coming home alone. Not for long. Harold and the Machine were being hunted. As long as Root was free, she would be working to find them. A lack of safety for himself was nothing new, but knowing his creation was in such danger as well was endlessly disturbing. 

Down low in his heart, Harold simply felt haunted. So many people had already died for the choices he made. And now the list was longer. Like Nathan before them, Harold watched these lives come to terrible, violent ends up close. Ghosts would be following him back. 

He felt different. He felt _changed_. These memories - God, these memories - would be returning with him, never to leave. All that he had witnessed was now permanently sewn into his soul. 

The staggering depths of human cruelty.

The astonishing tenderness of human compassion. 

The heartbreaking and the heartbreaking.

Harold let himself be led onward. John required nothing more of him than moving his feet, and sooner than he would have thought possible, they were back on the road in a fresh car. Fresh to them, in any case. The rusted sedan's owner who left it parked with a for sale sign at the shopping mall probably wouldn't have considered it fresh in any sense. 

Reese's plans were impressively thorough, complete with a bag full of drive thru breakfast to share. Harold watched towns go by, then countryside. All the while he knew he was being watched himself. John's peripheral vision never left him. 

He was still trying to mind him, to save him. 

He would do it again. He would do it this instant. 

If he believed Harold's safety required it, John would jump out of this moving car right now. If Harold was being threatened with a gun, John would step in front of the bullet without so much as a second thought. 

"You can't. You know you can't."

Reese turned his head.

"I know I can't what?" 

Hell. 

Harold never intended to get into this so soon but his protective walls were still so low. No matter how hard he worked to bear them back up, every second he could feel them eroding away. John was an endless gentle stream that polished the rocks it ran over thin and smooth.

"Mr. Reese, you understand you can't ever do that again."

Instantly uncomfortable, John froze.

"Harold, I... I never meant to–"

"I know I can never repay the debt that I owe you."

"Debt? Wait, you're talking about me finding you? No, of course you don't owe me anything. That's the first thing you ever said to me, you remember? This isn't a transaction."

"You work for me, Mr. Reese. It is exactly a transaction. I have an obligation to you and an obligation to all those that you help."

" _We_ help. All those _we_ help by helping each other. I know where you're going with this, Finch, and I want you to stop it. You're about to give me some twisted analysis declaring yourself expendable for the greater good as if I'm supposed to accept that. Things aren't true just because you believe them, Harold."

"I believe them because they are _objectively_ true. You can save lives without me. I can't save lives without you. These are facts, John, unavoidable. You can't be allowed to risk yourself for me when you are the only one of us who can go on with our work with the Machine alone."

" _Be allowed_? Well, I'm looking forward to hearing how you intend to enforce that one."

"I won't have to. You know that I'm right. The numbers are too important for us to be anything less than logical about protecting them."

"I am being logical. I can't and I won't do this if it means abandoning you. I already made that clear to your Machine and you need to understand it too."

"Then you did communicate with the Machine. It... _helped you_." 

Root was right. It was sickening when she was right.

"Carter and I were out of leads. But I knew something that could point me in the right direction, given the proper incentives." 

"There are no proper incentives. I made sure of that. John, what did you do?" 

"I just told it the truth, that's all."

"What truth?"

" _Mine_. Let it go, Finch. I'm not changing my mind on this."

"I can't let it go. It is an egregious vulnerability in the code. If the Machine has such a flaw that it can be swayed in its logic by a simple conversation, then everything I have understood about the inviolability of the system is wrong. I need to know what it is that you said to make it help you." 

"I don't remember the exact words. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that it understands now that I won't do this without you and you should too."

"But how does it understand that? The Machine's contingency function is designed to be persistent. Simply telling it that you refused to continue could not have been enough to motivate it to such drastic action because the Machine knows a decision made under immediate emotional duress is likely to be temporary. So I know there was something else, Mr. Reese. What was it?"

"All I did was tell it what it needed to understand and show it I was serious. I really don't know what you're looking for here, Finch. We can talk more about this when we get back, all right?" 

" _Show it you were serious_... You threatened it? Some kind of ultimatum to trigger the Machine's self-preservation protocols? But you can't damage it in any way. You can't destroy it, you can't even harm it. So what did you threaten it with that made it believe its processes were realistically in danger?"

"Harold, _stop_."

"It would have to be something it needs, something vital to its operation, but you don't have access to anything like that. I suppose you could try to threaten the library, but ultimately it's not essential to the system, just convenient. You have no means to harm the feeds, or the servers, or the communications... I mean, the only thing truly project vital that you have access to at all is yourself." 

And all of the breath fell out of his lungs at once. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Harold turned himself entirely to face the madman in the driver's seat, but Reese only tightened his grip on the wheel and kept his eyes on the road. 

"I told you to stop."

"You threatened _yourself_? What did you do, put a gun to your head? John, _no_. Tell me you did not do something like this in my name."

"I didn't put a gun to my head." 

"How reassuring. Then what was it instead, Mr. Reese? Because it's the only solution that fits the evidence: an immediate threat to yourself, something believable, reliably deadly, and caught on a video feed somewhere. What did you do? Take a walk on the edge of a bridge? Stick a needle in your arm in a park? Maybe you brought a webcam with your razor to the bathtub so the Machine could _watch_ as you opened your veins."

"I just stopped, okay? I said what I meant and I stopped."

"Where, in the tracks of a train?" 

"More like a skinhead motorcycle gang. Look, it doesn't matter. I'm not letting you die if there's a way I can prevent it. We're all clear on that now, and we can just leave it there."

"No, we can't. _I won't_. It is not acceptable to me that you would trade your life for mine. I utterly refuse it."

"That's not a choice you get to make for someone else. Finch, did you really expect me to stand aside and let a psychopath torture and murder you? Is that who you think I am? Or is it just how little you think you're worth? You saved my life, Harold. I'm only breathing now because you gave me a reason to keep doing it then."

"That reason survives even if I don't, Mr. Reese. You must understand. I am not the Machine. I am not our _work_."

"No, I know. _Well aware_. You're only my friend. You're nothing at all." 

He ran a hand through his hair, too upset for stillness. 

"How, Finch? How can everyone else's life matter so much to you but not your own?" 

John stared ahead at the highway stretching into the horizon and Harold looked with him. Waiting for them somewhere at the end of this road was their home, their precious burden, their shared purpose. 

And their inexorable fate.

"I could ask the same question of you, John. I do, in fact, nearly every day." 

The rest of the drive was quiet. The city eventually appeared in the distance, small in one windshield, larger in a second, enormous in a third. It drew closer by the minute, a gray tidal wave of skyline ever rising until it swallowed them completely.


	6. The Bottom of the Glass

Scotch was Nathan's drink. 

Everything with a high alcohol content was Nathan's drink.

Harold watched the flows and eddys of expensive brown liquid as he rocked his glass back and forth in his hand. The ice cube made a sound every time it hit the side. 

_Clink._

Across the table, John was watching him. 

He was always watching. He was always curious. He cared, always. 

_Clink._

Scents of peat and smoke suffused into the air and imbued every breath.

Smell is the closest sense to memory.

_Clink._

Harold dearly wished he'd agreed to beer.

But at least she was alive, he tried for the thousandth time to remind himself. Their first number since they'd returned, the diplomat's daughter, she was alive. She was safe now. 

She survived. 

And Harold did next to nothing to accomplish that. 

"Mmm, single malt, good choice."

Nothing of this was a good choice, but John was enthusiastic anyway. He was reading from the bottle when his eyebrows rose. 

"Huh. This whisky is older than I am."

It wasn't older than Harold was. 

These were the distances between them. The age of the Scotch. The width of the table. The ability to mentally push past anything.

Seeing his small talk not progressing, John took another approach. He gestured down, a smile in his voice. 

"See, I knew you two would make friends. But you make friends wherever you go, don't you, Bear?" 

Next to Harold, the dog looked up at the sound of his name, alert and vigilant. He guarded him even closer than the man who instructed him to do it in Dutch. 

"I'm glad he was with you today."

 _Today._

Harold thought of himself today, standing with Bear in the middle of the bustling street, the cacophonous city noise around them drowning away, muffled completely by the blood rushing in his ears. His heart lurched again just remembering it. And its consequences.

"A woman nearly died today by my failure."

If not for the alcohol, perhaps he could have managed to keep that thought to himself. Perhaps not. His profound weakness was the entire problem. Harold stared into the depths of the whisky to avoid the depths of John's eyes.

"What?" John sat up, his voice deepening. " _No_ , Harold. We saved Sofia. And you made that possible. A sweet girl lives today because of what we were all able to do working together."

He was right, of course. Sofia didn't die.

Only her best friend did.

"What happened was unacceptable. I have to be available in the field if you need me."

"You will. But that's such a small part of how you help me. We could never save all the lives we manage to without you backing me up from behind the scenes. Finch, you bought an entire credit bureau to make my cover work here. That's incredible and you pull off stuff like that like it's nothing."

"It is nothing if I can't follow through."

"Following through is my job. It's what you hired me for. There's no reason to punish yourself like this. You'll get your feet back under you. It's just not instantaneous."

"It had better come close. The numbers do not wait for our convenience, as you well know, Mr. Reese."

"It isn't about convenience. It's just reality. Sitting there berating yourself won't make your hand heal any faster. It won't make this heal any faster either."

" _This._ "

"Look, I know you don't want to talk about it. We don't have to. Just remember the way you feel now is natural and it's not forever. I know from experience. That's all."

God, if anyone on Earth did, surely John knew from experience. How many times had the man been held captive in his life? Forcibly tied to a chair? How many times had he been restrained, beaten, tortured? It made Harold sick to his stomach to consider he had lost track in just the time since John came under his employ. 

And yet there he sat, as calm as ever. Still every day he got up and went wherever Harold told him to go and faced down whatever danger was there to be found. Nothing stopped him. Certainly not anything as base and meaningless as personal fear. 

But today, even when he knew an innocent person was in need, even when John asked him for his help directly, even _now_ , Harold was afraid for himself. It was weakness, he knew. It was selfishness. It was nothing Reese would have ever allowed to happen. 

While Harold was roiling inside, John was placid. Even now.

"Hey, you know, I saw they're showing Dial M for Murder in vintage 3D next week at–"

"Don't. Just don't." Harold's voice wavered. There was nothing he could do to hide it, not that it would have done him much good anyway. John already knew he was faltering. "I know what you're doing. I appreciate it, but no."

"Harold..."

"It's not possible, Mr. Reese. I heard what you said to Ms. Campos today. Unfortunately you are both quite mistaken. I am not a good friend, not to you or anyone else. My friendship does not end well. Your employment is not going to end well. There is no sense in pretending otherwise."

"I don't particularly care how this ends. What does it matter? The whole idea is to keep the part before that going as long as possible. And you're pretty decent at that part, whatever you think."

"But what happens after _as long as possible?_ I care about how this ends because now I have to plan for it again. Because of what you've done, I need to be prepared. I know what it is to watch my only true friend die in front of me for decisions that I made, Mr. Reese. I will be watching the very moment your heart stops too. Or listening this time, more likely. I will be listening when the last breath you are ever able to draw gives way to silence."

" _Finch_. Please look at me–"

"And I've accepted that! I made my peace with it. It's what we have to do. We have to protect them, all of the lives our numbers represent. But if you die just protecting me, what was the point of it? What did any of it mean? I can't let you waste yourself like that. Too many lives are at stake to care for sentimentality. Your attachment to me endangers their survival. Our attachment to each other. We can't, John. We can't."

"We can't what, admit we're people too? Have our lives count at all? Have _your_ life count? Harold, _look at me_. You did not kill your friend. You are not going to kill me. You didn't kill Corwin or Weeks or anyone on the lists. No one. _Ever._ Criminals did that. Lunatics did that. People like me did that. _Not you_." 

The tightness that had been building in his chest clamped down hard on his lungs. The sounds of the room began fading away as before, leaving behind only the deafening thunder of his pulse in his ears. 

In his memory his own voice echoed endlessly from the past, from a singularity of both glorious defiant vindication and absolute raw terror for himself and the only person alive who cared about him for who he really was, who loved him for it. Because that was the truth Harold knew in that instant.

John Reese loved him. 

Nothing was ever more dangerous.

 _Because you're wrong. He_ proves _you're wrong. Not all humans are bad code._

_You're wrong._

_You're wrong._

_You're wrong._

_You are wrong!_

"God damn it, John! You are nothing like them! You are nothing like _her!_ " 

He slammed the glass down hard on the table. John flinched at the sharp sudden noise. At his feet, Bear came to attention, instantly on alert. Heads in the room turned toward them as ice and whisky splashed out onto the table and all over Harold's hand, soaking the bandage and the cut beneath. It burned like wildfire. 

He gasped in pain and grabbed his hand by the wrist, curling in a bit on himself. The knowledge that he had just done something wildly irrational and in full public view sat like a stone in his mind, but there was no way to take it back now. There was no way to do much of anything now. His heart was beating too fast and he was breathing too fast and somehow John was already beside him.

Reese sat down and kept his head low, talking quietly, close. He was as attentive and still as inconspicuous as he could possibly be given the scenario. It was kind, but mortifying that it was required. His hands stayed in his lap but his knee pressed against Harold's. 

"Easy, Harold. Listen to me, it's all right. Just give yourself a minute to breathe, okay? All I need you to do right now is breathe and... and listen to me."

Next to him, John leaned in closer, and he took a series of slow deliberate breaths of his own in through his nose that he blew out in long streams through his mouth. 

He remembered. They both would always remember. 

And they both knew Harold would always be listening. 

This time he consciously tried some shaky, inadequate mimicry and found the effort at least marginally successful. However feebly, the autonomic response began to work as it was meant to, and he felt his heart slow from painfully racing itself to arrest to merely jackhammering a hole into his sternum.

"Don't worry about it, Finch. This is nothing. Any place that sells alcohol deals with it being spilled occasionally, nobody cares. When you're ready, I'm going to leave some money on the table while you go rinse your hand off in the men's room, and we'll take a walk over to my place so I can bandage it up again for you. It's a nice night and the exercise will be good for Bear. What do you think? Harold?"

Reese was talking logistics again, forward steps. Trying to get his mind off of the immediate. It was smart and not entirely ineffective. Between still too tight breaths, Harold made his own point. 

"You can't just leave cash... on the table... Mr. Reese."

"No? Why not?" 

"For one thing... that bottle cost almost... three thousand dollars."

He earned a bright open laugh for that. John was close enough Harold could feel his amusement in the jostle of their knees.

"Yeah, of course it did. All right, well, make it 'use the platinum card' instead. Come on, Harold. Let's get out of here."


	7. Reclamation

John's apartment was where the man lived, where he slept, but it was only _his_ in terms of possession. He had changed it not at all since the day Harold presented him with the key. On the same couch facing the same painting and the same lamp, Harold sat, self-conscious. 

At least it was open here, full of light. John caged himself whenever he could. Harold bought and furnished this place wanting him to feel free.

To feel it, not to be. John Reese was not free. Neither of them were.

"Hey, give me a minute. I'm going to go put the kettle on. Let's have something to drink that doesn't cost more than my first two cars put together."

The implicit statement was that he'd have it here, of course. Harold's preferred type and brand of sencha was a prize piece of information it took John months of surveillance and investigation to acquire. The tea may not have cost in the range of an automobile or two, but it wasn't exactly cheap either, having to be ordered and imported directly from a particular grower in Japan in Japanese. But John made the effort and the expenditure. Of course he did.

_Months_ of work just to learn about tea. But in the space of one evening, John had learned so much more about him. Harold openly told him he watched his friend die. Almost a year ago now Reese found the picture Nathan gave Harold of the two of them young and smiling in distant lost happiness. _In the beginning_ , as Nathan had put it in his own hand on the back. Connecting those points of data was certainly no leap, and from there the information cascaded. 

Harold and Nathan Ingram were longtime friends. Harold witnessed his only friend's death. It was public knowledge that Nathan died in the ferry bombing, which meant Harold had to have been there as well. And that fact then explained exactly where and when and how Harold came to be crippled. How his first life ended. 

Just days ago John saw the physical realities firsthand. Now he understood the history. And far more of Harold than he would have ever willfully chosen. 

John returned and stood above him with tea steaming in his hands and concern written on his face. It took only tracking his eyeline down to Harold's uninjured hand clenched hard into a fist next to him to understand why. Harold released his stiff and aching fingers immediately but the damage was done. Reese let them drink their fine gyokuro sencha in plain white coffee mugs for a while in silence. It was never going to last.

"Listen, I want you to know what happened today wasn't anything more than fresh stitches coming loose. It happens. You had to push yourself before you were ready." 

"Present tense. I _have_ to. Another number could come at any time."

"And when it does, we'll handle it together like we always do."

"And when it's two or three or twenty?"

"Then we loop in Carter. If it's more than twenty, I guess we'll probably have to call Fusco too."

John shrugged and smiled. He smiled like it was nothing. Like he believed it, that any of this was possible. 

John smiled and he almost made Harold want to believe it too, despite himself, despite it all. 

"Finch, you've been telling me a lot about what I can't do. Is there anything I _can_ do to help you? What do you need? You know all you have to do is name it."

Oh, is that all? 

_Name it._

As if there was some way to simply say it, to compress into a form of verbal expression the complexity of what he needed. How could there be words to convey the entirety of a being? How could a vocabulary exist to describe the soul that sustained his own?

Harold had no way to put any of it to voice. But it occurred to him that perhaps it was possible there was something he could do to remotely approximate it in action.

It was a risk, but there was only risk from here on out. There had only ever been risk with them.

"You can... you can come with me, John."

John stood and followed him out of the apartment and into the floor's hallway dutifully, without even a hint of doubt or question. He would have followed Harold off the edge of a cliff if that was where he went. He already had. 

At the room at the end of the hall, Harold gestured toward the door. The knob rattled in John's hand when he tried it. 

"It's locked."

"I suppose you'd best unlock it, then."

He cocked a quizzical eyebrow and reached into his jacket for a lockpick.

"No, Mr. Reese, I did not tell you to break in. I told you to _unlock it_."

"Finch, I don't have–"

And at last he knew. He did have it. They both did.

John's apartment key slid in without resistance and the door opened with a click. He flashed a glance over but Harold simply stepped aside to let Reese lead.

Inside past an ordinary and anonymous entryway was a modest open space floor plan, with a clean but spartan area for living off to one side. Two chairs framed a small table and an unadorned bed sat next to a cheap wardrobe. A dorm refrigerator paired with a microwave just off to the side constituted the entirety of the space for food preparation and storage.

But whatever limitations the apartment may have had as a place to live, it made up for in being a rather lavish place to survive. The majority of the flat had been retrofit into a layman's emergency room, complete with a hospital bed ringed with lights at its center.

The room was well stocked. An array of illegal professional grade drugs sat tucked in repurposed cupboards. Numerous medical supplies for binding wounds and staunching bleeding were laid out ready at hand on a countertop. In the corner, a cluster of various electronic monitors waited for use near a wheeled kitchen island that had become a crash cart, holding all the basic lifesaving equipment that could plausibly be operated by a self-taught and still learning crew of one. 

"You weren't going to tell me about this place, were you?" 

"You were meant to find out about it when it became necessary, and so you did."

Walking slowly through the facility built solely to keep him alive, John absorbed the details in silence. He grazed his fingers along the edges of cabinetry and machines. 

"When did you do all of this?"

"After I needed it the first time. Before I have to need it a second."

It was inevitable. The day would come when Harold would be here attempting everything in his power, struggling and fighting alone in the desperate hope he would not _stay_ alone. He had walked in that shadow before, but he was not the only one who knew the terror of that darkness.

"Mr. Reese, I understand what happened to me has been... troubling for you. Believe me, John. _I know_."

The weight John had been bearing without complaint shifted on his shoulders and he could hide it no longer. He swallowed and looked away rather than reveal more.

Reese took some time to walk the room again and gradually gather both himself and the good hospital grade wound care supplies, better than anything he had available down the hall. Harold took his place on one side of the small wooden table and waited with his dominant hand laid out and open before him, as exposed and damaged and slowly healing as he was. When John was ready, he quietly sat across from Harold and settled his hand inside his own to begin his work cleaning the cut, taking his time, not looking up.

"Harold, this is... _thank you_."

"You needn't thank me for the bare minimum."

"An entire homemade trauma center is the bare minimum?"

"If I could hire a qualified staff, I would. As I am but one untrained person, yes, it is the barest minimum possible."

"I don't know, seems like I can imagine less. I suppose you got your doctorate from the medical college you founded while I wasn't looking too."

"I've funded departments, Mr. Reese, never a full college. And not to disappoint you further, but I never bothered completing post-graduate education. I already had a job by that point, so there seemed little use."

"Already had your own company, I bet."

"Two. I'd sold the third by then."

John laughed a little, but it dissolved into a weighted sigh.

"You scared the hell out of me when you were gone, Finch. And, well... I guess I've scared the hell out of you too."

"Again, present tense. For both of us."

Reese breathed, thought.

"You don't have to do this alone, Harold. You only think you do. You deserve to be able to need someone."

"I should hope I have made it abundantly clear I need you for all of our work."

"Not just for the work. For _you_."

Harold blinked. 

"I see. Does that mean you believe you deserve such luxury as well?"

"We aren't talking about me."

"We are talking about nothing else. Answer the question."

John lifted Harold's hand to bind it. He spiraled gauze around his palm and watched their hands move together.

"Doesn't much matter if I deserve it. I need you to need me. You do. That's all there is to it. Service is what's left of me and you help me use it for good. I can serve beside you. I can protect you."

"I will be insulted on your behalf for that, as I know you are unable. There is infinitely more to you than _service_ , John. You simply can't see it. I think of it as a form of color blindness in its way, an inherent lack of perception. So since I know I must, I will engage you on these entirely demeaning terms. No, Mr. Reese. I will not rob the world of your service for my survival. I know that you will continue to use your skills for good, as you have always meant to, whether I am here to support those skills or not." 

"It's not just my skills you support. Yeah, I could probably run the numbers without you, at least for a little while. I could track them down, I could do my best to save them. But then what? What do I do about the rest of it, all the time day to day _between_ those numbers, finding a reason to rest and eat and exist when there's no one left on Earth who needs me to? Harold, you don't understand. You are a part of the purpose you gave me."

"The Machine will always need–"

"The Machine is not _you_."

John placed Harold's now well wrapped hand back onto the table palm up, but he did not let it go. Instead he continued tracing the bandage, the folds and the creases, the borders where it met the skin. John was cautious with his touch as he moved until eventually his hand covered Harold's completely. With a gentle pressure, his fingers settled onto Harold's wrist. He looked only at that point. 

Their hands together did not move. Reese was silent for a long moment before he spoke again. 

"Finch, when you found me, I was hollow. Every part of me that mattered was dead, I was just waiting on the rest of it. But you were so _alive_ , Harold. And you needed me. You chose me and it was everything. You were. You were my life, my light when all of mine was gone."

Harold's breath caught in his throat. Carefully, tentatively, he pressed upward at John's wrist with the fingers of the hand he held captive. It took only a moment before he found it, the river of John's life ever surging at its banks, as insistent and half-wild as the man himself. 

There was something perfect in the circularity of their contact, the delicate connection of these hidden parts of themselves, the spark of life passing between them. Harold felt his heart rate ticking up from the unique intimacy of it and he saw the instant John detected that in a flash of his keen eyes and the quickening of his breath. John's own pulse beat heavy and ever faster at his fingertips. They were locked in an exquisite feedback loop neither of them had control over any longer. 

"You are alive, John. I am. _We are_."

John finally lifted his gaze, as intense as always but never so vulnerable. 

"The last time I felt alive... I was lying in your arms." 

His hand was trembling in Harold's. Or maybe it was the other way around. There was no way to know anymore. There was no difference.

"I need to feel alive, Harold. I need to feel _you_ alive."

_Need_. Such a terrifying and intoxicating word. Entire worlds, whole lives begin and end drowning in those four letters.

He let his fingers slide down John's wrist slowly, tracing the intricate bones, tracking the linear structures of muscle and tendon, caressing the soft skin warmed by the heat of his blood. John's head fell back a little as he drank deeply of the sensation. Harold could not have left now if he tried. 

There was nothing left to say. There was only to do. 

He stood and John watched his every uneven step around the table. Only when Harold stopped before him did Reese lower his blue eyes, as ever prepared to accept his due judgement. He shivered when Harold ran his fingers through his hair, so unfathomably soft, a silken absolution. 

Harold cradled his head to him and John melted into his chest with a low sigh. Grateful arms embraced him. Slipping his bandaged hand down inside John's shirt, Harold returned to the welcome of his skin and the warmth of his body. He spread his fingers wide across smooth muscle and healed wounds and allowed John's shortened breathing to move him as it would. At his back, he could feel John's hand gently keeping time beside his mended spine, a swift and even tempo Harold recognized as the rhythm of his own heartbeat reflected back upon him.

With all of his will, Harold clung to him, this magnificent broken man, his doom and his mercy, his only thread through this labyrinth without an exit. He stood with Reese around him as they absorbed each other, one life entwined made stronger than their fragile separate two, a rope and its strands.

Whatever was to be, at least for this moment they were together. If only for tonight, John and Harold had each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for reading!


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